Buyers and sellers use a variety of techniques to ensure goods and services meet their mutual expectations. However, traditional procurement systems have been proven to be error prone, labor intensive, and costly operations. For example, often times, when a buyer is looking to purchase a batch of articles, a buyer might negotiate terms for the purchase prior to making the purchasing decision. The negotiation allows the buyer and seller to ensure the articles and terms (e.g., price, quantity, delivery conditions, etc.) will meet any specific requirements. Traditional buying and selling mediums, such as auctions, catalog based purchasing, and selling, and the like, do not always facilitate the most efficient matching of requirements. The recent ascendancy of electronic commerce provides a means of avoiding, or at least reducing, the problems presented by the use of traditional buying and selling mediums.
In many respects, the Internet and the World Wide Web based network technologies have largely eliminated the most labor intensive and costly portions of the buying and selling type commerce operations (e.g., the use of mass mailings, printed specifications, catalogs, updating preprinted product information, etc.). To take advantage of advances in network technology, a variety of electronic commerce facilitating schemes have been developed. One such scheme involved the use of business-to-business buying and selling exchanges implemented on the Internet. The term “electronic commerce” or “e-commerce” originally evolved from remote forms of electronic shopping to mean all aspects of business and market processes enabled by wide area communications networks, namely, the Internet and the World Wide Web based network technologies. E-commerce is a rapidly growing field, and is generally understood to mean doing business on-line or selling and buying products and services through Web (e.g., Internet based) storefronts or through other similar distributed computer networks. In general, electronic commerce is substantially similar to the more traditional catalog based commerce schemes. The business-to-business e-commerce exchanges, or simply “B2B exchanges” have evolved to focus on the specific needs and requirements of buying and selling between businesses.
As the use of B2B exchanges has proliferated, the implementation of electronic commerce auctions has become increasingly common. Auctions are different from traditional catalog based commerce schemes. Auctions generally aggregate buyers or sellers to purchase or sell items/services through the respective submission of competitive bids. Generally, the most competitive bid is designated the winner of the auction. For example, in an auction amongst multiple competing buyers, the most competitive bid is usually the bid offering the most money for the specified item or service. In an auction amongst multiple competing sellers, the most competitive bid is usually the bid offering the specified item or service for the lowest price.
Thus, buyers and sellers participating in an auction compete with one another on the basis of the terms of their bids. Auctioneers have an interest in making the bidding process as competitive as possible to effect the most efficient matching of requirements between sellers and buyers (e.g., getting the best deal). Large numbers of buyers or sellers competitively trying to outbid one another usually leads to the most favorable terms.
Often, the auctioneer desires an understanding of how bidding is progressing in a live auction. This is particularly desirable in auction with a short life span (e.g., 2-24 hours). Auction status information is useful in determining a number of factors. For example, if the bidding activity is lower than desired, the auctioneer may elect to invite additional bidders or extend the auction close time. Alternatively, if the bidding activity has met the auctioneer's goal, the auctioneer may elect to end the auction immediately.
Currently, an auctioneer must access text-based data in order to view bidding information. Typically, the text-based data is difficult to interpret and understand. Furthermore, typical auction data is not provided in real-time. For high-velocity auctions with short run times, it is necessary to be provided with real-time auction data.